Herb W Morgan

Herb W. Morgan is a retired investment executive.¹ He served as board chair of the San Diego City Employees' Retirement System.² He founded an investment firm in San Diego that was later acquired by Cantor Fitzgerald Investment Advisors.³

He campaigns on a platform he calls Radical Transparency, and proposes publishing all state spending on a public, real-time blockchain ledger and using artificial intelligence to audit for fraud. He wants to automatically withhold funds from programs that fail audits and require zero-based budgeting. He would prioritize audits of non-governmental organizations that receive state homelessness money. He opposes raising the minimum wage, arguing government mandates raise costs and kill jobs. He opposes a "split roll" revision to Proposition 13, saying it would harm California’s business climate. His campaign says the state’s budget masks a roughly $20 billion structural deficit.^{4, 5, 6, 7}

His campaign says he collaborated with other trustees to overhaul the retirement system's financial reporting and governance.² He built a transparency platform, California Radical Transparency, that his campaign says analyzed over 122 million state financial records covering nearly $2 trillion in transactions.⁸ His campaign’s white paper estimated $312 billion to $425 billion in potential waste, fraud, and improper payments over five years.⁹